Aggression Keys Henderson’s Win

Jason Logan

Jason Logan

Brooke Henderson has always been a very aggressive player. From her junior days to her sterling amateur career to her few years as a professional, the Smiths Falls, Ont., native has subscribed to a grip-it-and-rip-it style off the tee and an eyes-locked-on-the-flagstick approach into greens.

On Wednesday, during a conference call with Canadian media to discuss her win last week at the Meijer LPGA Classic in Grand Rapids, Mich., and to promote this summer’s CP Women’s Open at Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club, of which she is an honorary member, Henderson admitted that earlier this season, when she was posting a string of surprisingly average results for someone of her pedigree, she had perhaps played too conservatively. More recently, the 19-year-old said, she’s been finding her groove again and when she and her team arrived at Meijer host Blythefield CC, where she finished T21 a year ago, they knew it was time to take the safety switch off.

“My dad, early in the week, was telling me, ‘If you want to win you have to take these lines off the tee,’” Henderson explained. “He had me cutting corners over trees and I was able to hit my driver almost perfect over those four days. I was able to have an advantage over the rest of the field. I was ahead of them by a considerable yardage and had less clubs in and that gave me more birdie opportunities. Without him telling me that during practice rounds last week I wouldn’t be in this position right now.”

Henderson executed the game plan perfectly, opening the tournament with a mistake-free eight-under-par 63 — her lowest score of the season — that featured six birdies and an eagle. She said that round, in which she nailed 10 of 12 fairways and 16 of 18 greens, was massive for her confidence and she followed it with scores of 67-67-66 to ultimately win by two shots over Lexi Thompson and Michelle Wie.

The triumph marked just the third top 10 of the season for Henderson, and although she stated that she felt she had perhaps deserved some better results than she’d been posting the last few months, she also bluntly stated that she “really needed the win.” It also came at a great time as next week she’ll defend her KPMG Women’s LPGA Championship title at Olympia Fields near Chicago, a traditional tree-lined track not dissimilar to the course at which she won the major championship last year, Sahalee CC near Seattle.

“The feeling of being able to hoist a trophy again is unexplainable,” she said. “It’s such a great feeling to do it on a Sunday, and kind of remind myself that I do belong here and I can contend on the LPGA Tour and get back to some of my bigger goals and knowing that I’m able to do it with a lot of golf left this summer — four major championships, the CP Women’s Open, which will mean so much to me being so close to my hometown, at one of my home golf courses, the Ottawa Hunt, and also during Canada’s 150th anniversary. So there are lots of great things coming up this season and I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to compete and hopefully contend many times.”

While it wouldn’t be accurate to say Henderson had fallen on hard times before the victory given she was still regarded as one of the best women’s players in the world and was still among the LPGA Tour’s top-30 money winners (she’s now sixth), the teenager made it clear she has high expectations for herself and found her time away from the Sunday afternoon spotlight frustrating.

“I think this year I’ve learned patience and perseverance, the importance of both of those,” she said. “I was shooting really good scores but I just wasn’t able to make the putts. I feel like patience is extremely important in golf and in life and I feel like that was a really good lesson that I needed to learn. And I can still continue to learn from it even after my victory last week.”

The win in Michigan was the fourth of Henderson’s young career and moved her to 13th in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, a ledger on which she rose as high as second last summer.